The present invention relates to a effluent removal system, and more specifically, to a pipe that permits attachment of a drilling rig mud pipe in roughly the proportional steps by which a rig is walked to serial borehole openings.
Operators routinely re-use drilling rigs at substantially the same drill-site in order to place multiple drill-holes. Each drill-hole is the product of a drill-bit that is laterally guided to disparate petrochemical bearing formations. The drilling rigs are serially placed; then used to drill down into the earth; and to complete each borehole so that fluids may be extracted. However, under conventional methods, the crew whom are to perform operations of drilling rock and completing the well, can be left idle during a critical phase of the lateral drilling operations. Namely, the crew is unable to do these operations during the time that the drilling rig is being moved to the borehole site, even though such a site is within a few meters of the previous borehole.
A number of utilities are detached and reattached to the drill rig before and after the rig is moved. Among these utilities is the effluent pipe that takes used mud from the rig and places it into a storage tank. Since the conventional mud pipe is often larger than a foot in diameter, and are structured to handle heavy fluids, the mud pipe can weigh so much as to require a crane and the coordination of pipe-fitters. As such, the operation just to connect and extend the mud pipe to reach the stationary storage tank can impose delays that leave both the rig and the drilling crew idle, while still consuming budget for completing the several wells.
Accordingly, a remedy is sought to the above-stated problem.